增稅，減少開支，商業建築投資減少，以及私有企業投資化肥減少是一季度GDP增長緩慢的元凶。
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The economy grew more sluggishly in the first three months of the year than the government first reported, as higher taxes on payrolls dampened consumer spending and held overall growth down to just a 1.8 percent annual rate.
Make no mistake about it: this is really grim. And to make matters worse, it's something we did to ourselves.
The Commerce Department had earlier estimated growth at 2.4 percent. Most economists expected that number to remain when the final revision came out Wednesday.
This follows an expansion of just 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
The biggest source of the downward revision came from consumer spending. Government economists had estimated that consumer services consumption (excluding housing and utilities) would grow by 2.5 percent, instead it grew at just 0.7 percent.
That's stall speed for consumers. Far worse, in fact, than the 2.4 percent growth seen in the fourth quarter.
There were also downward revisions to nonresidential structures investment, equipment and software spending, and the change in inventories. Government spending shrunk by slightly less than expected, so the sequester spending cuts weren't as big of a deal as some predicted. Residential investment was up by far more than expected, 14.0 percent.
The main culprit behind the consumer pullback seems to be what Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke calls "fiscal headwinds." Specifically, the end of the payroll tax holiday left less money in the hands of consumers to spend. We taxed ourselves out of growth.
"The lower consumption estimate provides some indication that the impact from fiscal austerity may have been more than previously thought, and that the economy started the year on weaker footing than previous estimated," TD Securities analyst Millan Mulraine wrote in a note.
But don't entirely discount the federal spending cuts known as "sequester," which kicked in on March 1. Even though the sequester did not directly diminish government spending by as much as possible, its anticipated effects may have dampened investments.
Gross private investment was revised down to 7.4 percent growth from the estimate of 9.0 percent. Commercial investment fell 8.3 percent, compared with an estimated fall of just 3.5 percent. Business investment was revised down slightly lower to 4.1 percent from 4.6 percent. Those drops likely reflect a projected weakness in the economy going forward.
